


as she was to me

by Niki



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, POV Female Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4772216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/pseuds/Niki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She doesn’t know when the fascination turns to admiration.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	as she was to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gamerfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/gifts).



> Thank you for giving me a reason to explore the Thane romance! I hope you enjoy the end result...

_Guide this one, Kalahira,  
and she will be a companion to you as she was to me._

\------  
Before  
\------

Shepard can’t stop staring at his lips. They look so smooth, and she can’t stop wondering if it’s the smoothness of chitin or metal, or soft, like flower petals, like human skin. It distracts her, which is new and frightening, and potentially dangerous if she lets him distract her at a wrong moment.

He fascinates her with his utter alienness, in a way Garrus, Liara, or Tali never did, they always seemed more known, more… human. How did Kaidan put it? _Saints and jerks, just like us._ Except Thane Krios. It’s not just the way he looks, his scales and chitin lips, the vastness of his black eyes, the fascinating way he lives his memories. It’s the way he views the world, his place in it, his faith and his morality.

When he compares himself to a weapon, she would call anyone else on their flexible morality, but how can she judge him on human terms, expect him to think and feel and reason like them? He is alien, but that is not a value judgement, his alienness is not off-putting or frustrating, it’s fascinating, drawing her in, to learn more, to know more, and it’s the desire to know _him_ , not his kind.

When the fascination turns to admiration she doesn’t know, their existence so hectic, their lives a series of quests and adventures and haste and desperation. His presence makes it better, his finger steady on a trigger, his breathing even by her side in the field, his voice calm and his thoughts clear. 

She envies him sometimes, the way he’s… not resigned, never that, that would be defeat, and death is not a defeat to Thane. But the way he has made peace with the ephemerality of their lives, of his own limited time left. Everyone is hurling the words “suicide mission” around, and Shepard believes that it will be, is resolved to see it to its end – because they have to, because it’s worth it, because someone has to – but she’s not so sanguine about her own death. She just got her life back, after being convinced she’d reached the end, and she doesn’t want this mission to be the short post scriptum in her journey. 

And at some point she realises she doesn’t want to die because she doesn’t want to leave _him_ , doesn’t want to die until they have had a chance to… something, to acknowledge what there is simmering between them, to taste his chitin lips, to test if the line that goes through them is something she can feel on her tongue. It should be odd to desire something – someone – so alien, but it isn’t. He isn’t alien. He is Thane. He is the calm in her life, the shelter from their mission, the fire in her veins. 

And she is in his. The bravery of her beloved never ceases to take her breath away. The way he opens to her, his willingness to risk loving one more time, to make himself vulnerable just when he has found his peace, risking dissatisfaction, loss, grief. 

His lips are warm, which she didn’t expect, but as smooth as she'd imagined, with less give than human lips. They feel like drell lips, like nothing she’s ever touched, smoother than chitin, softer than metal. 

Thane kisses her like she’s precious, valued – a human, not just a soldier. But there’s the fire too, passion on his lips and touch, the flame they share the same way they share the duty, the mission.

They may only have a short time left, but better them than all mankind, better than all the organic life in the galaxy. They may only have this moment together, but she has learnt enough from him than she knows it’s worth it, it will be worth it, even if they die, even if only one of them dies. 

When she loses faith, he is there, and then, right at the eve of the end, when he finally experiences a moment of weakness, she is there for him, giving him back the support and love she has gotten from him during these anxious weeks and months. 

She holds him close, holds the galaxy in her arms, and dreams of not dying, all the while accepting the fact they might, and it might not be the end, because through his strong faith she can almost believe they would meet again, that there really is a shore they can reach, on the other side of a sea.

\----  
After  
\----

It’s too soon, she’s too raw from the loss, but Thane taught her courage, taught her that sometimes it is worth it to open herself up to loss, because then one also opens up to pleasure, companionship, love. Liara called what she had with Thane "a few stolen months" and... yes, maybe, months they stole from death, and what can she do now but steal again, steal more, because he showed her it was possible, that she was allowed.

It’s too soon, but they might not have long, and if Thane left her with something, it is the faith that sometimes it’s worth it to grasp what there is when they still have time, that a few moments of sharing can be worth years of pain, that the pain can be tempered by opening herself up for something – someone – new. 

And it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to meet someone else’s eyes, to think, maybe, maybe. It feels like being true to what they had, what he taught her, just by his faith, in his religion, in himself – in her. He called her a warrior-angel, and maybe she truly understands it only now, faced with his loss and the possibility of setting herself up to lose again. 

She can best honour his memory by being as ready to risk herself, just as willingly as he risked himself, not just in battle, but in love. 

She whispers a prayer to Kalahira, not knowing if she truly believes in her, but wanting the comfort of the words as well as the ideas. She wants to believe Thane is waiting for her somewhere, where he has been united with his first love, where he is finally free of pain and grief. 

She wants to believe that one day they will all meet across that sea, where the traveller never tires, the hungry never starve, and the lovers never need to be parted again – however that would work with the four of them. She could ask Kolyat what the priests say, but decides instead to have faith that the goddess has that one covered as well.


End file.
